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Cisco ONS 15310-CL and Cisco ONS 15310-MA Troubleshooting Guide, R7.0
Chapter2 Alarm Troubleshooting
2.5 Trouble Notifications
2.5 Trouble Notifications
The ONS 15310-CL and ONS 15310-MA systems report trouble by utilizing standard alarm and
condition characteristics, standard severities following the rules in TelcordiaGR-253-CORE, and
graphical user interface (GUI) state indicators. These notifications are described in the following
sections.
The ONS 15310-CL and ONS 15310-MA use standard Telcordia categories to characterize levels of
trouble. The system reports trouble notifications as alarms and status or descriptive notifications (if
configured to do so) as conditions in the CTC Alarms window. Alarms typically signify a problem that
the user needs to remedy, such as a loss of signal. Conditions do not necessarily require troubleshooting.

2.5.1 Alarm Characteristics

The ONS 15310-CL and ONS 15310-MA use standard alarm entities to identify what is causing trouble.
All alarms stem from hardware, software, environment, or operator-originated problems whether or not
they affect service. Current alarms for the network, CTC session, node, or card are listed in the Alarms
tab. (In addition, cleared alarms are found in the History tab.)

2.5.2 Condition Characteristics

Conditions include any problem detected on an ONS 15310-CL or ONS 15310-MA shelf. They can
include standing or transient notifications. A snapshot of all current raised, standing conditions on the
network, node, or card can be retrieved in the CTC Conditions window or using TL1's set of
RTRV-COND commands. (In addition, some but not all cleared conditions are found in the History tab.)
For a comprehensive list of all conditions, refer to the CiscoSONET TL1 Command Guide. For more
information about transient conditions, see Chapter3, “Transient Conditions.”

2.5.3 Severities

The ONS 15310-CL and ONS 15310-MA use Telcordia-devised standard severities for alarms and
conditions: Critical (CR), Major (MJ), Minor (MN), Not Alarmed (NA) and Not Reported (NR). These
are described as follows:
•A Critical (CR) alarm generally indicates severe, Service-Affecting(SA) trouble that needs
immediate correction. Loss of traffic on an STS-1, which can hold 28 DS-1 circuits, would be a
Critical (CR), Service-Affecting(SA) alarm.
•A Major (MJ) alarm is a serious alarm, but the trouble has less impact on the network. For example,
loss of traffic on more than five DS-1 circuits is Critical(CR), but loss of traffic on one to four DS-1
circuits is Major (MJ).
•Minor (MN) alarms generally are those that do not affect service. For example, the automatic
protection switching (APS) byte failure (APSB) alarm indicates that line terminating equipment
(LTE) detects a byte failure on the signal that could prevent traffic from properly executing a traffic
switch.
•Not Alarmed (NA) conditions are information indicators, such as for the free-run synchronization
state (FRNGSYNC) or a forced-switch to primary timing source event (FRCSWTOPRI). They could
or could not require troubleshooting, as indicated in the entries.